Stanley Carvalho |
When a beloved family member suffered from the dreaded cancer in 2017, Jairaj Galagali was obviously distraught; Juggling work, home and hospital was nerve-wracking.
The California-based Indian coach needed to do something to de-stress. The cricket bug that had bitten him years ago came to his rescue and an inspiring idea was born.
“The mind needed a break, to escape to another world, to my 12-year-old self, when life revolved around cricket and movies,” Galagali begins in his deep baritone.
“I decided to dig up old footage of priceless moments from India’s rich cricket history,” he says, sitting in his Bengaluru apartment during a bus-driving holiday.
Today, his non-profit YouTube channel ‘Jai Galagali’ features several vintage videos dating back to the 1940s from the Indian Film Division, as well as self-created cricket-related videos.
His channel has more than 30,000 subscribers and millions of viewers in all countries where cricket is played. Furthermore, Galagali has become known as an archivist and aficionado of the history of Indian cricket, a fact acknowledged by well-known cricketers and the media.
However, his journey from 2017 onwards was not a piece of cake. Sitting in his studio in California, he had to make numerous late-night calls to the Mumbai Film Division, which often went unanswered. Galagali doggedly pursued his goal, knocking on many doors before finally collecting his loot after paying for it. The shipment of 200 DVDs (each DVD was a newsreel that also included cricket trivia) arrived at his doorstep.
“I was carrying this box that literally contained the history of Indian cricket and when I took it to my room, tears filled my eyes,” he says, half-smiling.
The newsreels covered all the cricket matches filmed in India since 1948, a year after India’s independence in 1947. Some of them had soundtracks, many did not, he adds.
Galagali quickly jumped into action and posted the videos on his YouTube channel with some editing. Little by little, he gave some depth to the videos with a short narration adding some context, background, and interesting information. The libraries at Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley were useful repositories for his research.
The first video, Galagali recalls, was a three-minute video from the 1973 India-England match in Calcutta and the last video is an interview with former Indian wicketkeeper Syed Kirmani, who published his autobiography recently in Bengaluru.
Some of the popular videos include India’s first victory in a cricket test match in 1952 in Madras; Indian players are seen wearing black wristbands as a mark of respect to the late King George VI. In that memorable video, Galagali also interviews CD Gopinath, now a nonagenarian, who made the game-winning catch of that match.
Another is that of the first Test series between India and Pakistan in 1952, where the bowling action of the legendary Subhash Gupte is shown live for the first time.
There are other memorable clips from cricket matches played in the 1950s and 1960s between India and England, India and the West Indies, Pakistan’s tour of India and the debut matches of some of India’s greatest cricketers.
Cricket matches have always had their share of drama and one surprising video is of an enthusiastic woman in a sari who beat the security and reached the field to kiss Brijesh Patel as he scored 50 runs in the test match between India and the West Indies in Mumbai, 1975.
Unexpectedly, Galagali’s labor of love hit a snag in 2020 when she received an email from YouTube citing a copyright violation by the Indian government. Realizing that he was not wrong, especially after having paid for the DVDs, he made several pleas to the Film Division that fell on deaf ears.
Galagali then approached cricket-loving politician Shashi Tharoor, who wrote a scathing letter to the ministry highlighting the importance of the channel. Some cricketers also expressed their opinion in favor of the channel. Soon, the channel resumed.
During the Covid lockdown, Galagali posted videos regularly, giving viewers, particularly cricket lovers, an option when live matches were not broadcast on television.
The response to Galagali’s YouTube channel is encouraging. “The images bring so much of the warmth, nostalgia and joy of the many cricket stories to so many viewers,” he gushes and goes on to quote a few responses.
A teenager from Delhi called to thank Galagali for his grandfather, who suffered from dementia, who opened up about the past after watching some videos.
Legendary Indian captain Pataudi’s daughter sent a message saying the videos brought back a flood of memories of her father.
An economist who suffered from cancer wrote to say that she watched the videos incessantly because she was a viewer of one of them.
It was “yesterday once again” for a Sri Lankan cricketer, currently living in Australia after watching a reel of the first Test series between India and Sri Lanka. The cricketer played in that series.
So far, Galagali has deposited only about fifty percent of the valuable treasure it possesses. Fortunately, now that the family member is back in good health, viewers can look forward to many more videos of Indian cricket.
https://jaigalagali.wordpress.com/
